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This is the latest in a series of posts I’m writing for Flavor Magazine’s blog examining the intersection of food, politics, and policy.

Bookstores don’t usually have a “Food” section. Most stores reserve a good deal of shelf space for cookbooks, and, perhaps nearby, there are sections dedicated to books about gardening and nutrition. Farther away, one might find a cluster of more rigorous works analyzing American food culture and the downfall thereof, probably by Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser, or their disciples.

Despite its title, Michelle Obama’s new book, American Grown: The Story of the White House Kitchen Garden and Gardens Across America, doesn’t fit neatly into any of the standard categories. That’s because it touches on nearly all of them.

Released on Tuesday, the First Lady’s book is many things–it’s a reflection on Mrs. Obama’s early relationship with food and gardening; it’s a brief overview of the history of gardening at the White House; and, as the title suggests, it tells the story of the current White House “kitchen garden” that Mrs. Obama started after her husband was elected President.

Like the White House garden before it, the book’s stated goal is to encourage “a conversation about the food we eat, the lives we lead, and how that affects our children.” That objective underlies much of Mrs. Obama’s work in her three-and-a-half years as First Lady, represented most publicly by her signature Let’s Move! initiative to combat childhood obesity by promoting healthy eating habits and exercise.

More than anything, American Grown is a message piece–a publication designed to reduce Mrs. Obama’s work on healthy living into a series of easily digestible concepts and goals, and to provide a platform she can use as she hits the campaign trail over the next five months on behalf of her husband’s reelection campaign.

On that count, so far so good: since the book’s release on Tuesday, she’s already made appearances on Good Morning America, NPR’s Morning Edition, The View, and The Daily Show, and nearly every major media outlet has run a piece about the book.

In some respects, the motivation behind this book and even its specific content are irrelevant. It’s a book about the benefits of a food culture rooted in fresh, healthy, local foods written by a woman with cross-culture appeal and enormous reach, and that, in itself, is a good thing.

It’s also hard to blame politicians for being political–in fact, Mrs. Obama’s team deserves to be commended for crafting a book that contains useful information presented in an appealing way (it unfolds against the backdrop of a seasonal motif, and features beautiful photographs, illustrations, and diagrams throughout), while remaining true to their political objectives and/or limitations.

Still, if the goal of this project is to help change Americans’ eating habits, I wonder whether the First Lady missed an opportunity by putting out an advertisement for her healthy lifestyle initiative rather than something that might have a greater impact on the way people interact with food on a daily basis–namely, a cookbook.

While American Grown does include about 20 recipes, they’re almost an appendix to the rest of the content, and the book only briefly touches on ways people can turn fresh and seasonal produce into meals–the kind of knowledge that might help people overcome the convenience barrier that persistently keeps them from actually eating the low-cost, healthy food that’s available to a vast majority of Americans.

It can’t hurt that cookbooks are enormously popular, even as sales of other categories of books are on the decline. Add in a popular, high-profile author like, say, the First Lady of the United States, and it seems to me you have a winning formula for selling books–or, in this case, altering eating trends.

Instead, we’re left to cross our fingers and hope that Mrs. Obama can use her stature to at least get more people talking about the issue, and or even to take a crack at the recipe for corn soup with summer vegetables near the back of the book.

Maybe the success of this book will get Mrs. Obama thinking about the possibility of another book–one that belongs under “Cookbooks” rather than “Politics”–sometime during her husband’s second term. I’d vote for that.

This is the latest in a series of posts I’m writing for Flavor Magazine’s blog examining the intersection of food, politics, and policy.

This week, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation is hosting its annual Food and Community Conference, a three-day gathering of farmers, advocates, and experts to discuss the importance of promoting healthy lifestyles, in part by increasing community access to fresh food.

On Tuesday, the foundation released of a poll and trumpeted its results. Among other things (including that 75% of Americans support doubling the value of food stamps at farmers markets), the poll found that over 90% believe “equal” access for all Americans to fresh produce is either very or somewhat important.

It’s great that so many people think it’s important to have access to fresh fruits and vegetables. Fresh, whole foods are better for us than processed ones, and if people think its important to have access to them, maybe that means we’re getting our dietary priorities back in order. A closer look at the actual poll questions and results, however, reveal that it may be focused on the wrong issue.

The poll contains numerous questions about access to fresh fruits and vegetables. Yes, 93% of respondents said they thought it was either very or somewhat important to make sure all Americans have equal access to fresh fruits and vegetables. But, according to the poll, an overwhelming majority of Americans already enjoy such access–in response to a question about that issue, 89% said that a place where they can buy fresh fruits and vegetables is either within walking distance or a short drive away from their home.

So if 93% understand the importance of eating fruits and vegetables, and 89% can already easily get them, what’s the problem? A better question–one that, unfortunately, the Kellogg Foundation poll did not ask–is whether Americans actually do access fresh fruits and vegetables when they have the chance.

Thanks to a number of other recent polls, we have an insight into what the answer might be, and it suggests there’s a big gap between access and consumption. A Gallup poll released last month found that, in 2011, 56% of Americans reported eating five or more servings of fresh fruits and vegetables–the minimum amount recommended by federal dietary guidelines and a significant portion of the nutrition community–at least four days a week.

These polls obviously lack scientific certainty–small variations in how the questions are phrased can skew results, and self-reporting is unreliable–and fruits and vegetables can be a regular and significant part of your diet even if you don’t eat five servings of them every day. Nevertheless, it seems likely that Americans are eating less fresh produce than they should, despite the fact that they know it’s important and can get it relatively easily.

Just as it’s easier for people to answer a poll question than to plan, shop for, and cook three healthy meals a day, it’s easier for advocates of fresh and healthy food to focus on access and call it a day than to change people’s actual eating habits.

This change won’t happen overnight, and access is a necessary prerequisite, so we should applaud the Kellogg Foundation and its partners for doing their part to raise awareness and keep the dialogue going. But we should also take these opportunities to ask the questions that really matter–and, more importantly, to encourage people to ask those questions of themselves.

This is the latest in a series of posts I’m writing for Flavor Magazine’s blog examining the intersection of food, politics, and policy.

Free lunches may be elusive. Unhealthy ones are anything but.

Anyone can walk into (or easier yet, drive up to) McDonald’s, and three minutes later, be gorging themselves on a Big Mac, a pile of fries, and a Coke. If getting up from the couch seems like too much effort, a pizza (with or without hot dogs baked into the crust) is just a phone call and a 30-minute wait away.

On top of being convenient, unhealthy food is cheaper–at least according to conventional wisdom. Whenever we debate the feasibility of a food system based on sustainable agriculture or the intractable nature of the obesity epidemic, invariably, someone blames the high cost of healthy foods and the relative affordability of their less nutritious counterparts.

Newsflash: the conventional wisdom is wrong. According to a new report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service entitled “Are Healthy Foods Really More Expensive? It Depends on How You Measure the Price,” healthy foods are not necessarily more expensive than unhealthy foods.

In light of the fact that most Americans’ diets fall short of federal nutrition guidelines, the report set out to determine whether a commonly cited reason for our dietary woes–the high cost of healthy foods–is actually true. In doing so, it examines three different metrics to determine the cost of food–the oft-used cost-per-calorie metric, as well as two alternatives: cost per portion and cost per edible gram. The report found that, in all metrics other than cost-per-calorie, healthier foods (e.g., fruits, vegetables, grains, and dairy) were less expensive than unhealthy foods (proteins and foods high in saturated fat, added sugar, and sodium).

The report’s methods appear to be sound, and, since not all calories are created equal, the two new metrics are arguably more rational ways to measure the true cost of certain foods. In addition, the findings should reassure cash-strapped Americans that eating foods like fruits, vegetables, and dairy can help us eat healthier and save us money.

The troubling part is that anyone finds the report’s findings at all surprising. A diet that includes (1) less calories, (2) whole foods instead of processed ones, and (3) a steady dose of home-cooked meals has always been healthier and cheaper. Furthermore, the fact that Americans routinely choose to eat diets heavy in processed foods and empty calories suggests that cost isn’t even the primary driver in people’s eating decisions.

The authors of the USDA study acknowledged as much in a conference call on Wednesday, asserting that consumers put a higher premium on convenience and taste than on cost. With respect to convenience, it’s easy to see why unhealthy diets beat out healthy ones: planning a recipe, buying ingredients, and cooking a meal is harder than pulling up to the drive-thru window or microwaving a frozen dinner.

But what about taste? In theory, a home-cooked meal should taste as good as or better than most alternatives–after all, you know which foods you like, and you get to prepare them based on your own taste preferences.

Unfortunately, preconceived notions about “healthy” foods’ lack of flavor combined with a general and growing disconnect from a food culture in which home-cooked meals play a significant role have conspired to make good food taste bad–both in our minds and on our dinner tables.

Still, the USDA report has value. Any time the idea that healthy foods can cost less than unhealthy ones receives news coverage, the conventional wisdom becomes a little less conventional, and a seed is planted in the minds of people who might never have considered the advantages of eating well.

But in a food culture where making tomato sauce and boiling pasta water is considered too hard, or where roasted vegetables aren’t considered tasty, we need to start thinking about factors other than affordability. On that count, we’re failing–and we’re paying for it.